Pages

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Commuting Between 'Two Worlds'

CRAVING 'MIDDLENESS'

Maryam Sakeenah

I travel across two worlds in my 20-minute commuting
distance between both my workplaces: a modern religious school and a private
grammar school where scions of Pakistan’s moneyed elite are privileged with quality
education in tune with modern needs. The mindsets I deal with, the attitudes I
encounter make for interesting comparison. At the religious school, the concepts
of the sacred and the profane as defined by absolute religious morality are the
framework for all thought-patterns and behaviour. Fidelity to the sacred is the
highest value promoted and readily accepted- at least ostensibly- in an
environment designed to actively encourage it. At the grammar school, the
central value is free thinking and critical inquiry rigorously promoted by the
administration. The curriculum is built around and disseminates post
Enlightenment Western perspectives and metanarratives, with the fundamental
premise being that of morality being relative, and of individual liberty being
the highest value to be protected and safeguarded. Students are taught to
invariably seek answers and explanations through logic, and question where the
logical basis for an assumption seems unsatisfactory. While the tendency is
generally positive, its universal and indiscriminate application may in fact be
reminiscent of the cold, rock-hard post- Enlightenment Rationalism that Post
Modernist thought struggles to throw overboard for some of the infamous
disasters attributed to it.

It strikes me each time in my Religious Studies class I
raise a point from within the Islamic tradition that requires acceptance
through faithful submission. While the classes are delightfully interactive and invigorating with questions, debate and
discussion, the same may also at times afford a glimpse into a stark, gaping
abyss that lurks at the heart of this kind of education that carries the
baggage of post Enlightenment thought.

I happened to mention in the course of a class discussion,
the fact that the wearing of gold for men is strongly discouraged in the
mainstream Islamic tradition, and was showered with sceptical comments on the
rationale of the ruling that bordered on impertinence. ‘But guys look so cool
with all those accessories, and what about those gorgeous wedding rings? What’s
just so wrong with this? I mean I don’t see the point,’ said a particularly
spirited young lady. I am also very often asked to suggest quick and easy ways
to help students get regular with the daily prayers. And I always find myself
unable to provide short and easy solutions, because the will to express
adoration, submission and reverence to God in the daily prayer is engendered by
a deep humbling sentiment within_ ‘God-consciousness’ (taqwa)- not attainable through the Logos alone.

The Western logocentric worldview ruthlessly drilled into
these minds that privileges objective, empirical knowledge and rationalist
thought over the intuitive ‘mythos’ does not help create the sentiment that can
make the daily prayer an act of loving labour. Judged and perceived by the
logocentric yardstick, worship rituals ‘lose the magic’, reduced to an arduous,
necessary undertaking that doesn’t quite help in the business of life.
Moreover, the prioritization of individual liberty as the core value makes the
demands placed by religious belief on personal behaviour and conduct become
confining and restricting. The ascendancy of Logos over Mythos interprets
existential questions as objectively knowable, reducible to ‘facts’ and
explainable by ‘empirical evidence.’ Religion with its core principle of a
Transcendent Unknowable Absolute Truth intuitively experienced through the
exercise of the mythos therefore is unappealing to the highly intellectualized
mindset produced in modern urban schools. This also explains the rising
incidence of Atheism in Pakistan’s institutions for the ‘privileged elite’-
high schools, colleges, universities. Encouraging a culture of questioning,
critical thinking and non conformism to convention, this kind of a ‘privileged’
education makes Atheism an exciting alternative many like to consider with some
seriousness and express with an audacity that becomes admirable in that
educational context.

William Egginton writes in ‘How Religions Became Fundamentalist’:
“One of the functions of religions was to
teach people that the transcendent nature of ultimate reality was such that no
human could ever, in principle, come to know the ultimate truth. What is
crucial to grasp is that this core principle simultaneously sustains the
existence of mythos and logos as two separate but equal domains of knowledge;
for if the ultimate, all-encompassing questions are by nature infinite, if
human knowledge in principle cannot grasp everything, then practical, objectifying
logos is simply not relevant to such discussions, and the holistic, metaphoric
standards of mythos have their place. Likewise, to the extent that modernity
has allowed mythos to be pushed aside by the practical successes of the
scientific method, the axial principle of the transcendence of ultimate
knowledge has been weakened. But it is this principle that more than any other
works to defend humanity from the dangers of its own certainty.”

By ignoring and excluding the ‘mythos’ and ignoring the need
for religious narrative and myth, our educationists have made young minds
incapable of developing an appreciation of aspects of religion inaccessible
through pure Logos. Iqbal had said, ‘Reason
is the lamp that shows the road, but does not mark the destination’- for
the destination lies beyond the abyss that is intractable to reason, and
requires the ‘leap of faith’ above and beyond that abyss. Pascal famously said,
‘above the logic in the head is the
feeling in the heart; and the heart has reasons of its own that the head cannot
understand...’

On the other side,
there is a conspicuous absence of religious discourse in our part of the world
that can respond to or even grapple with this heightened propensity for
questioning and demanding rational explanations. The rising numbers of young
atheists across Pakistan’s higher education colleges and universities therefore
is no surprise.

And then there is that other world. At Pakistan’s
traditional religious schools (madrassahs), the ‘Dars e Nizami’- a religious
studies curriculum that dates from Deobandi seminaries in 18th
century India- is taught. Although it is inaccurate to say that this curriculum
is stuck in the medieval past it originated in, given the many new ideas and
course contents added to it since, the fact remains that these new course
contents deal largely with the refutation of the concepts of other religious
schools of thought and sects. There are many madrassahs that also include in
the course, a heavily lopsided critique and refutation of Western ideas. This
threatens to develop exclusivist tendencies as well as what Sociologists would
call a ‘world-rejecting’ orientation that pits the religious graduate against a
monolithic and ‘otherized’ world full of false, evil and deviant ideas.
According to Dr. Tariq Rahman, “Thus,
while on the surface the madrassa
curriculum is medieval and unchanging, in reality it changes to refute whatever
seems to threaten it. This threat might be from alien religions or philosophies
but the fact is that the madrassas
do counter it. The madrassas,
then, are not static institutions. They are not buried in the past; they are
active and dynamic institutions which have seen themselves as being besieged
since British days and which are still fighting against the external world.”
(The Education of ‘Maulvis’: the Dars e Nizami debate)

The other half of my day is spent at a religious school that
struggles in its attempt to protect values sanctified by religion in the midst
of what it sees as an amoral morass in the wider society. However, lacking a
comprehensive curriculum for a modern Islamic school competing with the urban
private school and yet promising something unique in terms of faith, educators
at the school face an uphill task. Without the necessary educational basis consisting
of traditional aqeedah (the Islamic creed/belief/doctrine/theology) and
tazkiyah (ethics, spirituality) science that can help students internalize the
values the school aims to impart, these well-intentioned educators’ attempts to
mould Muslim personalities in what is seen as an increasingly valueless society
become reduced to a superficial imposition. This external emphasis without the
internal grounding triggers off among students a variety of responses. Taking
for example the issue of the Islamic dress code, the responses range from zealous
espousal of it by a small minority, to reaction against the perceived
imposition by asserting rejectionist behaviour on the contrary. There are many
more that docilely accept the dress code, not understanding or appreciating its
symbolism and significance, hence taking it as a matter of course. At best,
many of these schools mushrooming now in urban centres, present an alternative
environment for students to study much the same that they do in the regular
schools, with desperate attempts to include religious jargon, uphold religious form
and ritual. The advantages of the ‘Islamic environment’ promised by these
schools are debateable, given its islandic and insular nature in a diverse,
jostling external environment that the students of such schools eventually have
to find space in the midst of.

However, all said, these kind of modern Islamic schools
cannot and should not be so easily dismissed. This kind of school is a response
by sincere, educated, religiously inclined novices to the world-rejecting
outlook of traditional madrassahs, the obscurantist tendencies of religious
clergy and the exclusivist teaching of fiqh (juristic) schools of thought
adhered to by respective madrassah administrations. The modern Islamic school
is an attempt to bridge gaps, and hence tries to fulfil an important need.
However, these schools are in a nascent state, often employ amateurish methods
and need to evolve towards maturation.

The madrassah-educated Deobandi muqallid (exclusive follower
of a school of thought) whose speech is laced with religious jargon and
references to religious authority, and the English-speaking Social
Sciences/Humanities student quoting Dawkins and Hitchens represent two ‘worlds’
rubbing shoulders in this society. These two cultures created by two widely
differentiated education systems are all set upon a head-on collision course.
It is frightening because these ‘cultures’ overlap the stratification of the
society along the lines of social class. This means that the university
graduate possesses the cultural capital that eventually makes him monopolize
resources, sit at the helm of affairs and control policy, even when his
value-system is at the fringes of an otherwise deeply conventional religious
society. He is poised for the control over the generation of ideas and
opinion-making, and constructs inroads into the media and the academia. On the
other hand is the culturally deprived religious seminary graduate whose fewer
career prospects and the constant fear of poverty complicates the situation for
him as he perceives himself as disempowered and reduced to a social underclass.
The resentment this breeds means that he may not always react to this
predicament in ways that may be measured and moderated. It means the existence-
far from peaceful- of two clashing cultures and ideologies pitted against each
other in this society. Often the clash is intellectually played out as the
discourse and rhetoric emanating from both sides hardens against each other and
becomes increasingly intolerant and damning towards the other side- be it from
the religious or the secular-liberal fanatic.

I crave Middleness in a society pulled taught at the seams.
The poise of ‘middleness’ can be reached through the understanding that concepts
considered ‘secular’ and ‘Western’ and hence diametrically opposed to Islam may
not actually be so. Reason and rational thought, democratic values, pluralism
and humanism may in fact be as characteristic of Islamic tradition as they are
understood to be of modern ‘Western’ secular society, though both traditions have unique ways of understanding these. In the broadest terms, the two may not
necessarily be mutually exclusive. Most of these values are shared and
universal. However, given our cultural-religious context, these must be
interpreted and understood as distinctly envisaged by the Islamic tradition. This
is where the need and role of the ulema (Islamic scholars) comes in.

Nor is it wise in the least to think- as the
secular-liberals tend to- that solutions to contemporary problems have to be
found beyond religion, or that ‘progress’ has to ape the ‘Western’ paradigm and
jettison religion like the Enlightenment West did- lock, stock and barrel. This
narrow and superficial approach is the recipe for disaster that will
understandably provoke a backlash from the religious sections of the society.
The panacea seems to lie in a rediscovery and reassertion of the values of
Islam that address contemporary issues- values that may not necessarily be
averse to and against what many in the West may also have discovered and
advocated: the values of social justice and human rights, tolerance and
peaceful coexistence, rationalism and egalitarianism. Religious scholars must
engage in the colossal task of reinstating this rather eclipsed Islamic
discourse and narrative, evidence for which is voluminous in the Quran and the
Sunnah (life and example of the Prophet PBUH). This must be presented in the
language and method that can reach out to and address the modern mind. Central
and most vital to a solution is the understanding that answers have to be
sought (and are amply present) within the religious tradition of this society,
and not outside of it. Trying to seek them outside of it is a self-defeating,
mislaid endeavour.